I spend some of my best work days with growers – encouraging them to use their data to drive better agronomic decisions. Of course, I'm frequently also inviting them to become customers.

Dan Frieberg, President of Premier Crop Systems, talks about data and breakeven cost per bushel on the Farm to Fork Podcast.

In the early 1970s, I was fortunate to work for a farming operation that was serious about soil conservation. Serving on State Soil Conservation boards, building terraces, implementing no-till, when planters and weed control options were crude by today’s standards – they were soil stewards. Because of their mentorship, I’ve always taken soil conservation seriously.

Some people remember phone numbers or slender dates; I remember farm fields. Before the 2005 crop year, the program leaders for Central Advantage from Central Valley Cooperative in southern Minnesota asked me to help generate variable-rate planting prescriptions. The primary question was “agronomically, what makes sense?”

Throughout Premier Crop’s nearly 20-year history, we’ve perhaps been the most diligent at communicating that what we do – big data analysis – would be considered “observational data analysis,” which can show relationships and correlations, but stops short of providing cause and effect.

A commercial partnership brings combined analysis of financial records and field productivity to Syngenta growers.

You are likely asked for next years seed order many times before harvest even begins. In that case, one of the first decisions you probably will make using your yield data is which numbers to plant the following year.

Telling customers they are underperforming never seemed like a great business model to me. Benchmarking can have that exact effect – 60% aren’t performing well if you remember teachers grading on the curve back in school. Those at the top of the curve might enjoy the satisfaction of knowing they are the stars, but how do you gently push the below-average customers to step up their game?

Are you confident? Where does that confidence come from? From your life experiences? From your successes? Even your failures? What about the decisions you make in your crop production business? Are you confident in the decisions you make?

I grew up attending a small rural Iowa Methodist church and the theology from the pulpit was all about being "color blind". Of course, the irony was that we all looked the same. The color blind theology was all about seeing beyond the surface – looking deeper to find real values versus making judgements based on what's on the surface.